RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[aramis erak]

Why can’t that be resolved via a board game rule?

Actually, in most editions of Traveller, D&D, and many others, it can. Pemerton's assertion is literally true of Original Edition... because it's not got encumbrance rules. It's a cheap shot of pedantry.

AD&D, weight can be determined, carrying capacity is a known quantity, and the amount of encumbrance determines movement speed. It's very easily boardgamed in AD&D.
The same scores will result in a different rate in BX, but it will still be able to be gamified within the extant rules. (10 cn = 1 lb, weights up to 1600 cn are allowed. So, if your buddy is >160 lb, takes two of you.

So, yeah, he's literally corect, but ignoring the fact that many people still, no matter his interpretation, still played D&D as a wargame, not a storygame. Chainmail has no rules for carrying downed fellows off. Warhammer doesn't, either. Warhammer FRP does, and carrying that much makes you SLOW... but it's boardgamable.

 

[kenada]

Actually, in most editions of Traveller, D&D, and many others, it can. Pemerton's assertion is literally true of Original Edition... because it's not got encumbrance rules. It's a cheap shot of pedantry.

Encumbrance is on page 15 of Book I - Men & Magic. It’s coin-based just like D&D and AD&D 1e. The presentation could use more clarity, but that’s true of a lot of OD&D.

AD&D, weight can be determined, carrying capacity is a known quantity, and the amount of encumbrance determines movement speed. It's very easily boardgamed in AD&D.
The same scores will result in a different rate in BX, but it will still be able to be gamified within the extant rules. (10 cn = 1 lb, weights up to 1600 cn are allowed. So, if your buddy is >160 lb, takes two of you.

In OD&D, the weight of a man is given as 1750 coins, but the weight of a halfling is not. It’s up to the referee to interpret what that means.

So, yeah, he's literally corect, but ignoring the fact that many people still, no matter his interpretation, still played D&D as a wargame, not a storygame. Chainmail has no rules for carrying downed fellows off. Warhammer doesn't, either. Warhammer FRP does, and carrying that much makes you SLOW... but it's boardgamable.

The crux seems to be the need for adjudication. How do referees (or GMs or DMs) make rulings without reference to or the sharing of their understanding of things (implying imagination by being conceived in their minds)?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Actually, in most editions of Traveller, D&D, and many others, it can. Pemerton's assertion is literally true of Original Edition... because it's not got encumbrance rules. It's a cheap shot of pedantry.

AD&D, weight can be determined, carrying capacity is a known quantity, and the amount of encumbrance determines movement speed. It's very easily boardgamed in AD&D.
The same scores will result in a different rate in BX, but it will still be able to be gamified within the extant rules. (10 cn = 1 lb, weights up to 1600 cn are allowed. So, if your buddy is >160 lb, takes two of you.

So, yeah, he's literally corect, but ignoring the fact that many people still, no matter his interpretation, still played D&D as a wargame, not a storygame. Chainmail has no rules for carrying downed fellows off. Warhammer doesn't, either. Warhammer FRP does, and carrying that much makes you SLOW... but it's boardgamable.

Sorry, but ran and played AD&D, both editions, for their entire currency, and I think it is laughable to attempt to state that AD&D is any sort of concise set of rules whatsoever. This is uttermost nonsense. Its a hodge-podge of subsystems and vaguely worded 'stuff' largely held in place by convention. Any idea that you can play it 'like a board game' is simply not going to fly. Squad Leader is a boardgame, War in Europe and War in the Pacific are boardgames. Immensely complex wargames, but ones with exact rules for every situation, and precisely spelled out processes of play.

5 seconds after you agree you are playing AD&D the DM will be forced to make a completely arbitrary decision about something that is totally undocumented and has no mechanism for resolution, and that's assuming the situation itself, the 'board' if you will is entirely laid out in every detail (which it never is).

 

[pemerton]

So, yeah, he's literally corect, but ignoring the fact that many people still, no matter his interpretation, still played D&D as a wargame, not a storygame.

I don't know what you mean by "storygame". It's not a word I've used.

The contrast between D&D (and games descended from it) and free kriegsspiel-esque wargames has been discussed upthread I think. In D&D, the players are in a 1:1 relationship with particular characters in the fiction, and their principal method for engaging and changing the "gamestate" is by saying what their characters do.

5 seconds after you agree you are playing AD&D the DM will be forced to make a completely arbitrary decision about something that is totally undocumented and has no mechanism for resolution, and that's assuming the situation itself, the 'board' if you will is entirely laid out in every detail (which it never is).

I wouldn't say it's completely arbitrary. But it is not given by a formal process as in a boardgame or boardgame-type wargame.

In the example of carrying a friend through a pool, the key thing is not the issue of encumbrance, but the fact that the Halfling can sit on the human's shoulders and thereby avoid being submerged in water. This is not a boardgame state - it's a feature of what is collectively imagined.

And as you say, even were that codified a new situation would arise within minutes of play - eg using splintered wooden furniture to float a person, or a treasure chest, or whatever, across the pond.

It was obvious to me, as a child playing D&D (Moldvay Basic) for the first time in 1982 that the game was not a boardgame, and did not have "fixed", predetermined rules for every action declaration. This "open-ended" character is what made it different from a Fighting Fantasy gamebook.

The crux seems to be the need for adjudication. How do referees (or GMs or DMs) make rulings without reference to or the sharing of their understanding of things (implying imagination by being conceived in their minds)?

It's not so much the need for adjudication, as the method of adjudication - which, as you say, is to imagine things. Eg imaging what would happen if someone tried to float a treasure chest over a pond using splintered wooden furniture.

 

[Lanefan]

I wouldn't say it's completely arbitrary. But it is not given by a formal process as in a boardgame or boardgame-type wargame.

In the example of carrying a friend through a pool, the key thing is not the issue of encumbrance, but the fact that the Halfling can sit on the human's shoulders and thereby avoid being submerged in water. This is not a boardgame state - it's a feature of what is collectively imagined.

And as you say, even were that codified a new situation would arise within minutes of play - eg using splintered wooden furniture to float a person, or a treasure chest, or whatever, across the pond.

In order to codify the interpretation of what's imagined such that everyone agrees (or is forced to agree) we have abstractions in the form of rules; and these abstractions can, in practical terms, only go so far. Here, the abstraction doesn't reach the point of codifying these particular bits of the fiction, and thus something else has to take over if things are to proceed. (I'd guess we're in agreement thus far)

It's not so much the need for adjudication, as the method of adjudication - which, as you say, is to imagine things. Eg imaging what would happen if someone tried to float a treasure chest over a pond using splintered wooden furniture.

And where the disagreements tend to arise is over what method should be used:

--- adding more hard rules to the abstraction model to cover both now and if-when a similar situation occurs again
--- a one-time non-binding ruling or dice roll
--- a hand-wave
--- banning or denying the action because it's not covered in the rules
--- something else e.g. the player has to describe exactly how the character is going about achieving this goal and the GM (or table) decides success-failure based on the detailed description

And over how that method is determined in the first place:

--- player consensus or vote
--- hard-line GM ruling or fiat
--- reference to another game system

 

[pemerton]

In order to codify the interpretation of what's imagined such that everyone agrees (or is forced to agree) we have abstractions in the form of rules; and these abstractions can, in practical terms, only go so far. Here, the abstraction doesn't reach the point of codifying these particular bits of the fiction, and thus something else has to take over if things are to proceed. (I'd guess we're in agreement thus far)

And where the disagreements tend to arise is over what method should be used:

--- adding more hard rules to the abstraction model to cover both now and if-when a similar situation occurs again
--- a one-time non-binding ruling or dice roll
--- a hand-wave
--- banning or denying the action because it's not covered in the rules
--- something else e.g. the player has to describe exactly how the character is going about achieving this goal and the GM (or table) decides success-failure based on the detailed description

And over how that method is determined in the first place:

--- player consensus or vote
--- hard-line GM ruling or fiat
--- reference to another game system

I don't think that abstraction is really the right notion.

The rules - in OD&D, B/X, AD&D, even 4e and 5e D&D (I'm not sure about 3E) - for carrying a short friend on your shoulders through a pond, so they don't get submerged, are not abstract. For instance, there are no general rules about "cube stacking" of which this is a particular application.

The rules are, rather, if you can imagine it being done in these circumstances, then it can be attempted. The rules for resolving the attempt vary across editions - in the earlier versions GM fiat (which may include setting a roll), in 4e probably an Acrobatics or Athletics test if anything is at stake.

But the basic principle is clear, in my view, and is what marks the difference from a Fighting Fantasy gamebook, or even a very intricate boardgame or non-free-kriegsspiel-ish wargame.

 

[aramis erak]

Sorry, but ran and played AD&D, both editions, for their entire currency, and I think it is laughable to attempt to state that AD&D is any sort of concise set of rules whatsoever. This is uttermost nonsense. Its a hodge-podge of subsystems and vaguely worded 'stuff' largely held in place by convention. Any idea that you can play it 'like a board game' is simply not going to fly. Squad Leader is a boardgame, War in Europe and War in the Pacific are boardgames. Immensely complex wargames, but ones with exact rules for every situation, and precisely spelled out processes of play.

5 seconds after you agree you are playing AD&D the DM will be forced to make a completely arbitrary decision about something that is totally undocumented and has no mechanism for resolution, and that's assuming the situation itself, the 'board' if you will is entirely laid out in every detail (which it never is).

Not when all you're doing is marching, opening doors, searching for traps, and evicting inhabitants.
I also didn't claim conciseness.
How do I know its doable? Because I've done it as player, and as GM. It is, for me, not quite boring. I used to enjoy it more.

 

[clearstream]

I don't think that abstraction is really the right notion.

The rules - in OD&D, B/X, AD&D, even 4e and 5e D&D (I'm not sure about 3E) - for carrying a short friend on your shoulders through a pond, so they don't get submerged, are not abstract. For instance, there are no general rules about "cube stacking" of which this is a particular application.

The rules are, rather, if you can imagine it being done in these circumstances, then it can be attempted. The rules for resolving the attempt vary across editions - in the earlier versions GM fiat (which may include setting a roll), in 4e probably an Acrobatics or Athletics test if anything is at stake.

But the basic principle is clear, in my view, and is what marks the difference from a Fighting Fantasy gamebook, or even a very intricate boardgame or non-free-kriegsspiel-ish wargame.

Hence the prevalence of stochastic methods that are effective at choosing between what may be imagined. In that light, 5e (DMG) ability checks look roughly like this

you can imagine it being done in these circumstances --> interpret it to fall within the mechanical scope of an ability check --> ensure you've imagined consequences of success and failure --> distribute odds across those alternatives (set DC) --> roll to index which imagined alternative to work with

 

[pemerton]

@clearstream

Yes, that was Vincent Baker's observation here:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . .

(Plenty of suggestions at the game table don't get picked up by the group, or get revised and modified by the group before being accepted, all with the same range of time and attention spent negotiating.)

So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

That post, from 2003, is a prelude to his subsequent analysis of exactly what it is that the use of mechanics (and of rules more broadly) offers that cooperation, improvisation etc don't. (That is, rules don't just ease negotiation, but also create the space for introducing options that otherwise wouldn't be arrived at via vigorous creative agreement.)

 

[FrogReaver]

So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.

This part seems a little off to me. If game mechanics are modeling the stuff of the game world then there is no real-world social negotiation needed. It's only the times when the game mechanics aren't modeling the stuff of the game world that real-world social negotiation is needed - and even that's a bit of a misnomer because the game rules can designate a referee that handles this aspect - in which case there is a final authority and real-world negotiation isn't required and may not even be preferable (like the basketball player arguing with the ref whether he was fouled).

I mean - we seem to use words differently alot - so maybe real-world social negotiation covers all this stuff for you. In which case, carry-on!